Final Component List (ordering today)

I'd get a regular 400gig hd and start saving money for a solid state drive. Also unless you specifically need it (300meg photoshop files or video editing), 2gb of ram is plenty for now. Prices are bound to come down so it can be an upgrade in the future.

If I wait to get the second pair of ram will do you think I have problems with second pair not matching the first? Ie if crucial stops using micron chips like cosair did?

Thanks for responding btw.

Micron owns Crucial RAM  

lol. silly me. ok thanks for the feedback guys!

I agree that I wouldn't go over 2GB RAM right now. As I have said in other threads, a 32bit O/S (including XP and Vista) only has 4GM worth of addresses and roughly 1GB is used for video memory and the ROM on various devices. So you'll still only have acces to roughly 3GB of system RAM, that last 1GB will go unused because the system won't have any addresses left to assign to it.

DOH! Read your response about 20 minutes too late. lol

Ok thanks John. I didn't realize that about the addressing limitation. I'm not going to bother with a 64 bit OS. I guess I will return the 2nd pair to new egg. It will cost me the the restocking fee, but if that is the only thing I screw up in building this rig, I will be ahead of the game. Guess that's what I get for making a last minute change to my list.

After I read your post and did a bit of searching on that issue, I have seen where a few people even have had performace decreases on dual video card setups, I guess because part of the video ram wasn't accessable. In my situation do you think, ie just one video card, if I didn't return it and decided use it, do you think I would just not get the full benefit of the second pair, or would it actually hurt performace as has happened to some?

I have 4 sticks of DDR400 RAM in my older case and my comp sees 3.5Gigs... from what I gather... thats 1.5 more than with 2 gigs :wink:

The Computer still runs very smoothly, but boggs down in photo editing. With an X2 3800+ I was able to run many programs at once without issue, which is more than I can say prior to installing 4 sticks.

I am lazy, so I tend not to close programs when opening new ones... and I like to push the system when I can.

If you can afford it I don't think that the additional RAM is as much an issue as what other components you have.

Have you given much thought to 64bit OS... because it needs to happen, once that box gets fully opened we will have some serious performance.

I can afford it or I wouldn't have ordered it intially. But if its going to hurt performace, hinder over clocking, or just sit on my shelf I would either stand pat on the components I have and pocket the money or prehaps pick up a sound card and/or large storage drive.

I accidentally left out the video card from above although its on the way as well. And made a second last second change to add a second raptor which the list didn't reflect. I have updated the above.

As for 64bit OS, I have not thought about. Is there a concensus about it? My primary purpose for this machine will be gaming if that matters.

With respect to the other components please don't tell my a screwed something else up, lol. (unless i did lol.)

64 bit os gives no benefit for gaming right now. I'd stick with 32bit xp until some time in the spring/summer when something comes out that actually needs vista.

1337 b0x+stable os=sweet
1337 b0x+cutting edge=headache